The Iconoclast

The period of international supervision envisaged by the plan [for the final status of the Serbian province of Kosovo], as well as a host of “guarantees” and promises of “substantial” municipal autonomy for the few remaining Serbs and other non-Albanians in the province, are but a fig leaf meant to conceal the plan’s reality: that on the fundamental issue of Kosovo’s legal, constitutional and political status Ahtisaari gives everything to the Albanians and nothing to the Serbs. Even without using the “I” word, the plan proposes de facto separation of Kosovo from Serbia. Its primary focus is to finalize the detachment of Kosovo from the last formal vestiges of Serbia’s authority, with the definition of its future status a secondary consideration. --Serge Trifkovic

The same administration that has been willing to spend $750 billion in past, present, and committed future costs in Iraq, to "fight them over there so we won't have to fight them over here" (surely one of the most absurd remarks in the history of geopolitics), is unwilling to prevent the enlargement of a Muslim state in Europe itself, at the expense of those -- the Serbs -- who have been misunderstood (their justified fear of Izetbegovic and all that he represented to them -- (which is to say, the centuries of Ottoman domination, the principles of Shari'a, the devshirme), and badly mistreated, by the Clinton Administration, and by European states that do not realize what Islam is all about, and take as a given that the most plausible, most secular, most Western of Albanians represent the future of Islam, when the presence of Saudis and other Arabs, the attacks on Serbian monasteries and villagers, the establishment of a beachhead for future acts of terrorism throughout Europe, guarantees that this terminally naive vision will soon be disabused, or perhaps has already been disabused, but everyone is too afraid to recognize the truth. Meanwhile, Clinton, and Wesley Clark, and Richard Holbrooke, no doubt think they did a fine thing in the Balkans. No they didn't.

Don't take my word for it.  Take John Bolton's.  As the Washington Post reports this morning:

"This is a very bad deal," former U.N. ambassador John R. Bolton told CNN. "It contradicts fundamental premises of the president's policy he's been following for the past six years. And second, it makes the administration look very weak at a time in Iraq . . . when it needs to look strong."

When I mentioned the North Korea negotiations here over the weekend, there was some hope that we were on the verge of a Libya-type breakthrough — where the Norks would not only pledge to give up their nuclear aspirations but also surrender whatever they've actually developed to this point.  Instead, it looks like this deal is 1994 all over again:  We make energy aid and other concessions to them in exchange for their mere promise to take initial steps toward denuclearization. 

You'll hear a lot of chatter about how, no, no, we are requiring concrete steps and the concessions will be conditioned on those steps actually being taken.  Sure.  How can there be any other step, or any aid, absent, at the very least, North Korea coughing up what it has built in the dozen-plus years since it violated the last deal in which we naively accepted its pledges?  And if we're desperate enough to have this deal to agree to these terms, why should anyone believe we'd really blow up the deal when North Korea, having taken our measure yet again, inevitably cheats?

We are entering a very dangerous and depressing phase:  making deals the principal accomplishment of which is the demonstration that we're not unilateralist cowboys — diplomacy celebrated for its own sake rather than because it actually, materially furthers American interests.  It may make the Europeans happy and make our diplomats' dealings with their counterparts more pleasant; it doesn't make us any safer or advance our interests.

The mainstream media is swooning over the "velvet" touch of Robert Gates, the new Secretary of Defense who declined, at this weekend's European security conference in Germany, to take on Vladimir Putin after the Russian president's provocative anti-American speech the day before. 

Why can't I help thinking that the New York Times is impressed by Gates not only because he decided not to respond to Putin, a thug, but also because Gates — who is obviously a walking laugh-riot — decided the time was right, in Europe of all places, to take a shot at his predecessor, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld?  Here's the Times account from today:

The speech by Mr. Gates was delivered under the long shadow of his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, who both charmed and offended European audiences during his tenure as defense secretary, which included several speeches to this conference. Mr. Gates cast himself as a geopolitical realist and drew a knowing laugh when he focused on Mr. Putin’s assertion that the United States and its allies were dividing Europe. “All of these characterizations belong in the past,” Mr. Gates said. “The free world versus those behind the Iron Curtain. North versus South. East versus West, and I am told that some have even spoken in terms of ‘Old Europe’ versus ‘new.’ ” The last was a reference to a characterization Mr. Rumsfeld made in January 2003 to contrast Germany and France, which objected to the United States plan to invade Iraq, with neighboring supporters, not all of which are NATO members.

Good news, that, Mary, the fight to frame the issue as one of free speech vs. one of Muslim sensitivities, concern for their "feelings" now so ubiquitous throughout the West.  As I said, the kid is yelling fire in a burning building, and for that he is being sequestered in an undisclosed location.  (The classic example of when not to exercise free speech is the yelling of "fire" in a crowded theater where there is no fire.) 

Yes, there are differences between America and the U.K., which I acknowledge, the former having the First Amendment being another.  Those differences pale, however, in comparison to the gulf between EU notions of free speech, as they are now evolving (devolving, I would say), and what originates in English Common Law.  Adopting the EU's strictures on freedom of speech, where expression of nationalistic sentiments is being proscribed, comes with membership.  Shades of Napoleon's Contintental System. 

So freedom of speech is under attack from every direction.  It always is, though now the overt attacks appear daily, in waves.

The National Secular Society (h/t Harry's Place) has joined the fray:

Staff and students at Clare College should make a stand for free speech instead of backing those who would destroy it, says the National Secular Society (NSS).  

Reacting to news that a student who published a satirical issue of the student magazine that poked fun at religion is to be disciplined, Terry Sanderson, President of the NSS said: “We are shocked that the staff and even the students union at this supposedly liberal college have joined the attack on this student because he had the temerity to poke fun at religion. Free expression is such a precious commodity and is under such ferocious attack at present from religious interests that it is disgraceful that no-one is standing up for this young man’s right to be rude about religion – even about Islam.”

No, not "religious interests", just Islam. Mockery of any other religion would not have had the same effect.

Mr Sanderson has written to the master of Clare College, Professor Tony Bader and to the Senior Tutor, Patricia Fara as well as the president of the Students Union, Calum Davey, as follows:

“We write after seeing reports in the local Cambridge press indicating that a contributor to your student magazine Clareification faces disciplinary action for having printed items that some people thought were “offensive” or “inflammatory”.

“If these reports are true, we wish to register our profound disquiet that a supposedly liberal college has reacted in this way. The reaction risks undermining one of the most precious and important rights that we have in this country: freedom of expression.

“Satire aimed at religion is no different to satire aimed at any other ideas and should not be punished or restrained. The freedom to poke fun at those who take themselves too seriously is a time-honoured tradition in this country. Regrettably, it is rapidly being eroded by cases like this. We urge you to think again and stand four-square behind the satirists, instead of disciplining them.

We would like to remind all concerned that satirising religion – even if that religion is Islam – is not racism, as this episode has been dubbed. Religion and race have very different characteristics. We would have heartily joined the condemnation if the satire had been racially motivated, but according to the reports we have read, the issue of Clareification in question was devoted to religious satire.

“We would like to draw your attention to a case that is pending in France at the moment, in which a satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, has been brought to court by an Islamic organisation for re-publishing the Danish cartoons that are at the centre of so much controversy. In the French case, academics, artists and politicians of all hues have rushed to the defence of the magazine. Letters of support and statements defending free speech have been issued by some of the most influential people in the country – including Mr Sarkozy, who is potentially the next President of France.

“Your own reaction – as reported – does not bear comparison with the principled French reactions. It sides with the oppressors and censors who are doing so much to retard open debate in academe and elsewhere.

“We call on you to support the publishers of the magazine and to tell the would-be censors that their protests have been heard but that they will not prevail. Without the freedom to debate, discuss and, yes, mock, ideas and ideologies, there can be no informed political discourse. Satire is an indispensable tool in the operating of a truly free society.”

A problem with many atheists and secularists is that they see all religions as equally bad. Islam is uniquely dangerous, however, because it is so much more than a religion.

Eat your fill, too, if Phil doesn't mind.

Gratuitous and lubricious double, nay, single entendres about boots, from me and from Paul in the comments:

Man goes into Superdrug and asks for some condoms. "Sorry, sir," says the chemist, "We've sold out. Have you tried Boots?" "Yes," says the man, "But it keeps coming through the holes in the laces."

Chemist: A little something for the lady for Valentine's Day, sir? Have you tried Viagra?

Customer: Can I get it over the counter?

Chemist: Yes, if you take three.

Swedish man goes into a chemist: “I want to buy a deodorant.”

Chemist: “Ball or aerosol?”

Swedish man: “Neither. I want it for my aerumpits.”

An Irishman over in England when condoms were still streng verboten in Ireland, goes into Bootseses and shyly asks for his first packet of condoms.

The chemist asks him what size he wants.

"I didn't know they were different sizes."

"Oh, they are."

The chemist reaches beneath the counter and then hands over a board with a dozen or so holes in it.

"Go into that little booth there, and try this board for size; each hole is numbered. When you find the one that fits, just come back to the counter and tell me the number."

"I will," says the man, and disappears into the booth.

The chemist gets on with his work. Half an hour passes and he realises the man is still in the booth. He goes to the door, knocks on it, and shouts, "Are you alright in there?"

The man answers in great agitation, "I am perfectly alroight, thank you."

"Good," says the chemist, "What size condoms can I get you?"

"Oh, I don't want the condoms now, thanks. How much will you take for the board?"

Colonel Cucullu appears to believe that a stand must be taken in Iraq, and he insists that if the Americans do not "win" in Iraq the outcome will obviously be a victory for Islam and, what's more, nuclear bombs going off in the United States as a result of this "defeat.."

I beg to differ. I can't think of a more effective way of dividing and demoralizing the Camp of Islam than an American pullout, as rapid and implacable as possible, with no equipment left behind for the Arabs to make mischief with, though some may be left for the Kurds to defend themselves (and they must promise to defend Assyrians and Chaldeans in the villages of the north, those were always there, and those who went over the past century to Baghdad, and may now wish to re-settle in the north, if they cannot make it out of the Muslim Middle East altogether).

Yes, there will be shrill cries of victory, ululations of pleasure, for a day, a week, a month, maybe two months. Then? Then, as the Shi'a militia really go at it, without having the Americans constrain them, and as the Sunnis really go at it without having the Americans subduing them, and as both sides appeal to co-religionists outside Iraq (for the Shi'a, those in Iran) , for the Sunnis, those in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, even possibly Kuwait and Qatar, a permanent fault line will have been established, with tremors of intent being felt, constantly, and constantly threatening to become more than mere tremors. Ideally, that conflict would go on forever.

Cucullu has it all backwards. But he strikes me as a fan of football, not of chess, and certainly the American effort so far has been the clunk-clunk-clunk of boots and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and even bigger Abrams Tanks, on the ground, instead of clever people figuring out how to use propaganda, how to use the force of the enemy against itself, how to run that enemy ragged, as could, with far less money, men, and matériel being used up than has been the case in Iraq.

What a pity he, and so many others, have it so wrong. And how difficult it must be for those who sponsor them, but may begin to have caught a glimmer of what they should have understood all along -- and still are proving resistant to accepting, even though it makes obvious sense.

"None of which will stop Condoleeza Rice in her headlong rush to give them [the"Palestinians"] whatever they want."-- from a comment by Robert Spencer

It's called Total Ignorance of Islam. It's called Ignoring the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, the immutable basis for all subsequent treaties -- "truce" treaties rather than "peace" treaties --made by Muslims with Infidels.

It's called ignoring the doctrine that insists a state of permanent war (though not always warfare in the military sense) exists between Believers and Infidels.

It's called ignoring the concepts of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb.

It's called ignoring Muslim triumphalism, by which any compromise made by the other side is always and everywhere interpreted as a victory for Islam and as a necessary sign of weakness and confusion by Infidels, and always and everywhere leads not to a sating of aggressive appetites, a reduction in demands, but rather the opposite: a whetting of appetites, and further demands.

She, like Bush, knows or wishes to know, or pretends to know, nothing about Islam.

The very notion of a "solution" -- two-state or otherwise -- to the refusal, grounded deeply, profoundly, for ever, in Islam itself, by Muslims and especially Arab Muslims, is absurd, and reflects what at this point is unacceptable, nearly criminal ignorance, or negligence about matters of the highest significance.

The Arab Muslims are particularly impossible to assuage, for their belief-system, Islam, is reinforced by their sense of Uruba or Arabness. There is no "solution" to the Lesser Jihad, whether pursued by the Slow Jihadists of Fatah or the Fast Jihadists of Hamas. The only "solution" is that which the Western world found possible during the Cold War: a stand-off, in which the power of the West was overwhelming and seen to be so overwhelming that eventually, the other side collapsed, divided and demoralized and weakened from within. That will be much more difficult with Islam, but many things can be done to turn back the fruits of demographic conquest, and Da'wa, and to reduce, permanently, that money weapon. And of course no Muslim state must be permitted to acquire, whatever its regime, weapons of mass destruction or when a state -- Pakistan -- has done so, efforts must be made to deny it the ability to deliver those weapons or to transfer them to others, and if that requires warning Pakistan of its own destruction, that should be done. It can be done quietly, so as not to start the primitive masses primitively massing, but it must be done.

So what will Rice do? Open the floodgates to a renewed Jizyah of foreign aid? Keep prating about that "two-state solution" that accepts every single Arab propaganda line, including the turning of local Arabs, post-1967, into that newly-invented "Palestinian people." She had better start reading something about Islam, and something about the history of Jihad as a duty, as that duty was executed, over 1350 years, and she should pay particular attention to the conditions under which that duty fell into desuetude. For the duty remained, but the opportunity for fulfilling that duty was, at times, severely limited. And those limits were largely thrown off by OPEC oil wealth, Muslim migration, and advanced technology from the West that helped to disseminate Muslim propaganda. But all three: the flow of money, the migrants, and the access to Western technology, can and must be diminished or reversed.

The ways to do this have, over the past three years, been posted, repeatedly, endlessly, at this website and JW. One has only to mine the archives and the articles.

Shire Network News

This week we speak to Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu, former US Special Forces Green Beret. We ask him to compare Iraq and Vietnam, surprise surprise they turn out to be different. He is the author of Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin.

Story covered briefly in The Times and The Guardian.

I have a feeling Melanie Phillips will get her teeth into it.

The blogs are only just getting wind of it - Harry's Place and others.

Where is The Telegraph?

Had a similar story broken at a comparatively prestigious American university it would have been in all the papers within two days, probably sooner.

Are you sure about that? It depends what you mean by "broken". It looks as if the story has only just broken.

I'm not sure Americans can afford to be too complacent about their lack of dhimmitude. Have any students at US universities published material like the stuff that is being criticised in their student magazines?

"Hugh it seems you have put too much faith in this typical liberal politician. Obama does not want to say islam was found for wanting, and that he left it to become a better person, and a Christian at that."--from a reader

I'm not putting faith in anyone. I am trying to put words in the mouths of everyone. If Barack Obama sees the political advantages of declaring himself to be not a Muslim, and to make that clear -- to say that he is not, and never has been, or once was treated as if he was but never accepted Islam, or says he once as a child was treated as a Muslim and had no thoughts of his own but when he could choose, chose to be a Christian, this will help him in the Democratic race. It will help him because he needs to distance himself, clearly and unequivocally, from Islam. And in so doing -- not in making one of those "some have told me I should deny my roots, some have suggested that I make clear that I am not a Muslim, some have asked me to distance myself from what President Bush has rightly called 'one of the world's great religions"-- oh, he can go that route if he wants. But will damage him. If he takes my suggestion, he will not only have opened up a very good line of questioning, discussion, and debate, but forced Hillary Clinton, and the other candidates, to begin to make explicit statements -- asymptotically approaching the truth -- about Islam.

For example: the first candidate, Democratic or Republican, who introduces the word "Jizyah" and says "I'm against any resumption of aid to the so-called 'Palestinians.' I think the Arabs and Muslims who have received, without lifting a finger, some ten trillion dollars in OPEC aid, can take care of their fellow Arab Muslims. I'm against payment of what is, in its esseence, in the way in which it is received as a mater of right, and its cutoff regarded with resentment and hatred by the Muslim recipients, and the fear of the Infidels who keep shelling out this money, simply the Jizyah. What's the Jizyah, you ask? I'll tell you...."

The person who delivers that speech will get all kinds of attention, and a colossal rise, well-deserved, in support.

Tancredo? Webb? Anyone? Make that speech. Force that discussion. Get us out of Iraq, but for the right, not the wrong, reasons. And you will be President. And deserve to be.

From It Shines for All:

Czech President Questions Al Gore's Sanity 

"Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis, Czech media reported Friday," DPA reports.

Klaus told the Hospodarske noviny daily that the panel did not include "neutral scientists, a balanced group of scientists." "These are politicized scientists who arrive there with one-sided opinion and assignment," he told interviewers.

Drudge posts the transcript:

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you.

IOWA FALLS, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Sunday he does not think voters have a litmus test on religion, whether evangelical Christianity or his childhood years in a largely Muslim country.--from this news item

"Childhood years"? At what age was Barack Obama in Indonesia?

He's missing a trick. If he were to announce that he was raised, or was considered by some to be, a Muslim, but never accepted the faith, and openly demonstrated his Christianity just as soon as he safely could, that would gain him support. If he could depict himself, perhaps correctly, as an apostate, that would be even better: it would put him in the company of Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali [he should start seeing her, start learning from her, and make sure those photographs of him with her are widely distributed, if he knows what's politically -- and morally, and intellectually -- good for him], Wafa Sultan, Ali Sina, Nonie Darwish, Walid Shoebat, and others: All the Best People Born Into Islam. For that is exactly what they are. Just the way those who were part of the Dissident Movement in the Soviet Union -- Andrei and Elena Sakharov, Valery Chalidze, Anatoly Jakobson, Andrei Amalrik, Yuri Galanskov, Pyotr Yakir, Naum Korzhavin, and a thousand others, were All The Best People in the Soviet Union.

When it comes to totalitarian belief-systems, always learn from, in depth, those who were born into societies ruled or suffused with that belief-system, and who mentally fought their way out. They should be the guides.

It's up to Barack Obama whether or not he shows himself to be able to recognize this, and to see right through Islam, and to express his opposition to the war in Iraq not as an act of appeasement, but because he abhors the "squandering" of men, money, matériel, and morale, and wishes to husband our resources in order to better defeat what he can call, for now, the "forces of Jihad." He can also talk, for a start, about how the "$750 billion spent or committed in Iraq might better have been spent on energy projects that would deprive the world-wide Jihad of the money weapon."

Just say it. Just get those words out. And then all the other candidates will have to follow. And then the debate, and the comprehension of things by the public, will change. The dam will have burst.

Wasn't it only last Friday that Pincus thought, just the day before, he had seen a Defense Department Inspector General's Report that said Doug Feith's Pentagon office had produced intelligence "reporting of dubious quality or reliability," and that Feith's unit "was predisposed to finding a signficant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda"? 

Didn't the Washington Post then have to issue a correction acknowledging that Pincus had, er, misremembered — i.e., that what he had actually seen was a report written by Senator Carl Levin (D. MI), and that, in fact, the IG report had not made such conclusions about Feith?

Just askin' ...

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, born on the same day! 

The workings of blind chance?  I think not.

The time line on the development of the Danish Mohammed cartoon controversy at Cambridge University is puzzling.  Had a similar story broken at a comparatively prestigious American university it would have been in all the papers within two days, probably sooner.  Danes understand the controversy to be over freedom speech and freedom of the press—their speech, their press.  Where on Cambridge grounds, where in newsrooms around the U.K. are those with like understanding regarding freedom of speech at Cambridge?  Why haven't we heard a peep from the land that gave the world the idea of free speech?

I understand that student publications are anything but independent of their sponsoring institutions.  My questions are directed at "adult" journalists.

Esmerelda first posted on this story this past Saturday, having seen a short item in The Scotsman.

Subsequent posts on the story are here, here, and here.

A final question for the press:  Is keeping Muslims off your back a sufficient price to pay for abandoing your responsibility to defend free speech by exercising it.  Cover the story, damn it! 

If my son were to tell me, at age 19, that he had two options for summer employment, an internship at Goldman Sachs or a spell in a logging camp in the remote northwest, I'd beg him to accept the second.  And this would be un-Roveian of me, since his chances of a cushy & lucrative Wall Street job after graduation would be diminished thereby.  I'd beg anyway, since I think the second option would do far more to make him a man than would the first.  I have actually worked on Wall Street alongside summer interns.  Nice kids—every one of whom would have been much improved by a few weeks' logging, dishwashing, or stacking shelves.

Rudyard Kipling thought so highly of this principle he wrote a novel about it:   Captains Courageous. 

In Hedrick Smith's 1976 book The Russians, Smith's portrait of the Brezhnev-era USSR includes a scene where, after an official banquet, some apparatchik stands up and makes a speech thanking the organizers and the Party for making the event possible.  Delivering a response, Smith suggested that thanks were also due to the cooks, waiters, bartenders, and kitchen staff, who had also contributed to the evening's pleasure.  This suggestion was greeted with a baffled silence from the nomenklatura present.  Waiters?  Kitchen staff?  Who cared about them? 

Smith's point was to note the gulf of indifference that had opened up between the people who ran the Worker's State, and the actual workers.  He came from an older generation of Americans.

Those nomenklatura would be right at home in today's Washington, under any administration—certainly under this one.

From my own adventures in that line I can report that NY-area kitchen help in 1973-74 was around 40 percent African American, 40 percent Puerto Rican, 20 percent other.  I was only once in a kitchen where no-one else spoke English—the cafeteria of Charles Pfizer & Co. in NY city. 

Much of the Cambridge Evening News report below seems to have been taken from VARSITY - the Independent Student Newspaper since 1947.

The Union of Clare Students has been receiving letters of complaint throughout the week from enraged students. The Vice-President of the University of Cambridge Islamic Society reacted to the publication’s content with indignation. Speaking to Varsity, he said, “I found the magazine hugely offensive. Cambridge has a well founded reputation for  diversity, tolerance and inclusiveness and I was surprised to see such crude and unabashed prejudice. Freedom of expression does not constitute a freedom to offend and this clearly crosses the boundary of Islamophobia”. A second year Clareification reader said “I can’t believe anyone would be so stupid. They are some of the most offensive things I have ever seen.”

During Lent Term, Clareification is run by a different guest editor each week in order to broaden the opportunities for journalistic experience.  The guest editor was called before the College authorities on the afternoon of Thursday 8 February, where the President of the Clare Union of Students spoke on his behalf. At time of going to press, the outcome of the meeting remained undisclosed.

This is an image of the front page of Crucification cropped from the front page of Varsity. From what I can see there is also spoof comment about the Bible, something more reliable than, about which I do not intend to riot.

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Eli Lake has this in his New York Sun report this morning on the long-awaited Defense briefing about Iran's war-making in Iraq (italics mine):

[W]hile the specific intelligence on the explosive formed projectiles is no longer disputed in the intelligence community, the CIA is questioning whether their export from Iran represents a strategy of the regime or the rogue actions of one of its security services, known as the Quds Force. According to reports from the briefing in Baghdad yesterday, American commanders said Iran's export of the bombs to Iraqi Shiite militias was a deliberate strategy of the regime, noting that the Quds Force reports directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Sure.  Khamenei has reaffirmed that "Death to America" is Iran's motto, Ahmadinejad says a world without America is achievable, we have 30 years of evidence of the Iranian regime acting on those assumptions, and we know the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and its Quds (Jerusalem) Force have long been the mullahs' arms for exporting its revolution.  But when we catch the Iranians red-handed killing American troops in Iraq, the CIA figures it may not really be the regime but rogue elements.  One can easily see why Doug Feith is getting grief for not taking everything the CIA says to the bank.

In an earlier post Sarah Vine argues that the French like to appear knowledgeable - about books for example - even if they are not. The British, on the other hand, "suffer from a pathological need to downplay any intellectual prowess."

If you are, say, an American, and you want to know the answer to some question about literature or art, who do you ask? There's no point in asking a Frenchman - he will give you an answer whether he knows it or not in order to avoid looking stupid. And there's no point in asking an Englishman - he will claim he doesn't know the answer, even if he does, to avoid looking clever.

You could always ask a German. He will tell you if he knows, but he will probably only know the answer to rather dull questions. Ask an Italian and he will sing the answer to you, so you don't mind whether it's right or wrong, but this is not very useful.

Best to Google. After all, the Internet cannot lie.

Whatever the differences between the left and right ends of the political spectrum in the West, is nothing compared to the Grand Canyon size gulf that exists between Islam and the whole of the West. The Economist has a few things to say about the growing awakening to this fact, with thanks to Alan:

..This leftist-Muslim partnership exists not just on the streets, but in the protest movement's heart. Britain's Stop the War coalition, which has organised more than 15 nationwide protests and hundreds of smaller events, was largely forged by two small, intensely committed bodies—the far-left Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Muslim Association of Britain, which is close to the international Muslim Brotherhood. These tiny groups have co-ordinated street protests by up to 1m people.

With its combination of an American-aligned foreign policy and a large, angry Muslim population, Britain is an unusual case among Western countries. But in many other places, too, Muslim grievance has been yoked to a broader anti-capitalist or anti-globalist movement whose leitmotif is loathing of the Bush administration and all its works...

Just as Britain is the heartland of the leftist-Muslim partnership, it is also the main locus of a sharp and trenchant critique of political Islam. At its toughest, the argument of a new school of anti-Islamist leftists—mainly rehearsed on the internet—is that parts of the international left are now making as colossal a mistake as they did over Soviet or Chinese communism. They have let hatred of America and capitalism blind them to darker forces.

Two sorts of people have stressed this point: European ex-Marxists, embarrassed by their errors over Stalin, and dissident ex-Muslims from the Islamic world who have fled to the West and fear their hosts will “go soft” on their persecutors...

The foundational texts of Britain's “anti-Islamofascist” movement include the Euston manifesto, so called because of the drafting sessions in a bar near a London station. This spoke of a threat from Islamism to causes that leftists hold dear, such as equality between sexes and sexual orientations. It denounces “disgraceful” alliances with “illiberal theocrats”...

Nick Cohen, a peppery writer for Britain's centre-left media, has put flesh on the Euston manifesto's bones by listing the sins of the Islamic-leftist compact. Political Islam, he says, is not just a disaster for many causes (like feminism and gay rights) that the left cherishes; it also overturns the Enlightenment idea that diversity of opinion is desirable.

Paul Berman, a professor at New York University, is one of several Americans of liberal background who have joined the British denunciation of Islamofascism. He says the left's refusal to take sides in the internal battles of Muslim countries (between dissidents and oppressors) reflects an “angelic blindness” which mistakes violent reactionaries for charming exotica...

Here's a prediction. Most people on the Western liberal left will shrug off the call by Messrs Geras, Cohen, Berman and Lévy to “wake up” to the threat of Islamism. But Mr d'Souza will appal them so much that some may make a sudden dash for the barricades and join the fight against all theocracy, including the American sort.

Let's hope so.

AP has the story, here, via the New York Sun.  For the "why don't we just try talking to them" crowd, this is the direct result of negotiating with terrorists.  Pakistan made a treaty with the Taliban — basically, we'll leave you be in Waziristan if you promise to behave.  As night follows day, the appeasement gave the Taliban a safe base of operations, from which they have stepped up attacks on American-led forces.

It’s still the same old story

A fight for love and glory —

A case of do or die…

So it is, even in the Astronaut Corps, apparently. I am writing here, of course, about the arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak. Ms. Nowak was trying to kill — or at least abduct, but see below — fellow astronaut Colleen Shipman. Ms. Shipman has been dating the third astronaut in this story, Bill Ofelein, to whom Ms. Nowak was emotionally attached. What did I just write? Let’s not be mealy-mouthed here: “Emotionally attached” fiddlesticks: she loved the guy to distraction — to dementia, in fact.

The rest is here

NoMoreBlather.com provides some of the questions presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani can expect to face in the months ahead.

1. Won't the massive legalization of illegal aliens that you support be seen around the world as an amnesty, no matter what false name you want to call it for domestic consumption? Won't that result in millions and millions of people trying to come here illegally?

2. Given that the same forces that currently support illegal immigration also oppose enforcement of the 1986 amnesty's enforcement provisions and also support amnesty, should anyone in their right mind think those forces would support enforcement of the new amnesty, especially since that amnesty would give them even more political power than they now have?

3. The Mexican government has a great deal of political power inside the U.S., and may have even used proxies to organize several of last year's marches. Please explain exactly what you will do to prevent that government from having even more influence inside the U.S. should the massive legalization you support take place.

4. Do you think anyone in their right mind would consider a literacy test to be a tough requirement for citizenship as you propose?

5. What do you say to all those millions of people waiting in line to come to the U.S. who will have millions of former illegal aliens cut in front of the line, clogging the system and making it even more difficult for them to come here legally?